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Saw this on Vic's daily summary, and it caught my eye.

Though Boeing’s P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft remains years away from reaching full operational capability, it is already proving its mettle on deployments with the US Navy, according to programme officials.

Capt Scott Dillon, the service's programme manager for marine patrol and reconnaissance, speaking at a Farnborough briefing, said the fleet of 14 P-8As are performing “exceptionally on deployment” and matching the capability of the service's to-be-retired Lockheed P-3 Orions.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/farnborough-us-navy-and-boeing-praise-p-8a-401564/

For 275 million each, all we're getting is equal capability of the P-3's?

Still better than the F-35 is doing at the moment

ShanwickOceanic wrote:Still better than the F-35 is doing at the moment

Isn't that the truth.

I seem to recall a huge fight over engine production over the F-35. Looks like the Pentagon made the wrong choice.

As for the P-8, I know the article says the Poseidon will be upgraded, and will no doubt eventually be more capable than the P-3, one would think it would start out more capable than the airframe it replaces.

Biggest drawback I see with the P-8A is the range. A combat radius of 1,300 nm with 4 hours of loiter time. The P-3C has a combat radius of 1,300 nm with 3 hours of loiter time... But, on four engines. The Orion routinely shut down two engines to conserve fuel and has an endurance of 16 hours.

He stated that it matches the capability. He doesn't really state if it exceeds the capability.

Sure we can get into the range concerns but I would be hard pressed to believe that the newer electronic equipment only matches the Orion.

I think that they are very careful to admit or dismiss the capabilities of the aircraft relative to the P3 lest give away any information to the Chinese or others.

I think that not too much should be read into his guarded assessment.

Now is it worth $275M? I would think no, but I just wouldn't read much into the "matching capability" statement.

I'll say it again and again on the P-8. We got soaked so that Boeing could be appeased.



Half the cost, all the capability. Specifically designed for the role instead of an airframe that was never intended for the role crammed into it.